


The Blacksmith's Bride

by achelikeflowers



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gendrya - Freeform, Michael Ondaatje, the cinnamon peeler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 04:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7419577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achelikeflowers/pseuds/achelikeflowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on Michael Ondaatje's The Cinnamon Peeler. A short one-shot about marriage to a blacksmith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blacksmith's Bride

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Cinnamon Peeler](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/212104) by Michael Ondaatje. 



The pillows that lay on her featherbed were stained with black coal dust; the bodices of all of her dresses were marked with the same black stains, memories of his hands. Her shoulders and hair smelled of beeswax and smoke, and people in the village outside of the courtyard would know as she walked through the markets, with his scent floating above her; even the blind knew who was approaching. Even rain and snow did not wash it away.

Even among strangers she was known as the blacksmith’s bride. Her soft thighs were blemished with his hands; her sharp collarbones were marked with soot and fingerprints.

Before they married, he could barely look at her, never touch her, not with her noble family; with her keen nosed mother, and her protective older brothers. He would cover his hands in spiceflower and moonbloom; bury them in cinnamon; he helped pick mint leaves in the fields by the Wolfswood.

He had wanted to stay in the Riverlands, before they married, away from nobility, and expectation. They had been too young when they had met, and things had fallen apart. But when they met she was just a girl pretending to be a boy, trying to find her way home. He had promised to help her, when she’d confessed her true name, and he had betrayed her, left her. She was too highborn for him; he was just an unrecognised bastard. She’d told him all her favourite people were bastards.

She took him to the hot springs once, and his hands held her, not marring her skin with his profession. And they swam together freely, black coal and beeswax smoke hidden in the water of the pool as he chased her through the steam. But when they climbed from the water, she couldn’t find his scent; no black dust was on her shoulders, or her breasts, no handprints, as though she had never been touched at all.

“Is this how you touch other women?” she had asked, accused. “The chestnut picker’s wife, the oat roller’s daughter?”

“No,” he confessed. It was only her he had ever wanted to touch, but he didn’t want to mar her porcelain skin, stain her with the scent of his rough work.

“Well, then what is the point of touching me if I have nothing to show for it? What good is it to be the chestnut picker’s wife, with no trace, blind of smell.”

She had smiled widely at him, and drew his hands to her, his strong calloused hands, which would forever smell of smoke and coal and breathing, placing them on her small waist. “I am the blacksmith’s bride. Smell me.”


End file.
